In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to Donald Barclay.

Donald talks to us about how digital technology has changed the way people obtain and understand information.

Donald Barclay worked as an academic librarian from 1990 until his retirement in 2022, holding positions at New Mexico State University, the University of Houston, the Texas Medical Center, and the University of California, Merced. He devoted much of his career to teaching students how to think critically about the information they encountered in their academic, professional, personal, and civic lives. Working in academic libraries during a time when digital technology was expanding into every aspect of human life allowed Donald to both closely observe and actively participate in the biggest technological changes to humanity’s relationship with information since the advent of printing from moveable type.

Donald has authored articles and books on topics ranging from the literature of the American West to children’s literature to library and information science.

His book, Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies: How to Find Trustworthy Information in the Digital Age, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in June 2018, while his follow-up book, Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era, came out in 2022.

His book The Reinvention of the U.S. Academic Library: 1990 to 2025 is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Publishing and he is currently working on a book about his father's experience as a soldier in the Second World War.

Donald earned a bachelor’s degree from Boise State University and masters’ degrees in both English and Library and Information Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to working as a librarian, he spent four years teaching college writing and, before that, ten seasons working as a wildland fire fighter, mostly as a member of a U.S. Forest Service Hotshot Crew.

You can connect with Donald here:

Website: https://donaldbarclay.com Books: https://donaldbarclay.com/books LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-barclay-4b12713/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barclayfakenews/